


Time Spent in a Locked Hotel Room

by ShadowstarKanada



Category: House M.D.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-08
Updated: 2007-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:40:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23624761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowstarKanada/pseuds/ShadowstarKanada
Summary: I want you to notice when I'm not around.





	Time Spent in a Locked Hotel Room

The last night you worry about finding your hotel room keys is a terrible night. You get yourself drunk after House tells you to drop dead, and you almost think about crying yourself to sleep as you suggested he do once before. It seems so _womanly_ , though, so you drink enough alcohol that you're swaying. Your decision making powers are not all that they could be, so you take a woman back to your room, back to your bed, knowing she will be gone before morning.

The first day you miss work is the day the hospital falls apart. Not literally, of course. It's really just that two major crises happen in the short span of a few hours, and despite the fact that you don't call back on a few pages, no one really misses you enough to ask where you are. The nurses love having you around, but you're a _doctor_. You're not a friend to any of them, though you've been a lover to a few. The other doctors don't really need you for consults, because cancer is cancer is cancer. No one needs a walking, talking oncology text book, though it's convenient to have one around.

The second day, Cuddy calls your cell phone. She's hoping to get you to run interference on House while she deals with some of the fallout from yesterday, but you're not answering your phone. She is annoyed, but oncology runs like a chicken: with or without its head, all that counts is that the legs keep moving. If your department weren't so efficient, and if she weren't so busy, she'd probably send someone to find you and get you into her office.

The third day you miss work, your credit card is declined in Illinois. Your email in-box is filling up because you haven't filed all the biopsy results. For the first time, you really couldn't care less.

The fourth day you're absent, House leaves a message on your cell phone. It's really just a string of invectives, more because he's tired of buying his own lunch than anything else. You two have been on the outs since Tritter came along and ruined everything. It should be more of a surprise that he calls _at all_ than that he doesn't come to ask _in person_ why you've been away for four days without a word to anyone.

The fifth day is a Saturday. Everyone's busy, arguably except for House, who is taking morphine. Julie goes to synagogue. Your parents go to synagogue. One of your brothers stays home with his wife, and no one has a clue what the other one does. For all anyone knows, he could be dead, and all the carefully compartmentalized lives are busy enough without him.

The sixth day is Sunday, and it passes slowly, minutes ticking away. Somewhere, someone gets sick. Someone somewhere dies. And some other person gets better. Mostly, everyone just stays as they are, or gets worse bit by bit. You can't remember the last time you showered, and you're starting to smell.

The seventh day is when people start to wonder where you are. There are rumours in the hospital, probably started by House, about how you've run off with the girl from the coffee shop down the street. Cameron doesn't buy it, and tells House to stop staring at your office and focus on the damned patient Foreman found. Foreman is busy with the differential, Chase is busy with the patient, and they don't really care if House is a little bit distracted.

Your patients get their prescriptions filled by other doctors starting the eighth day. It's a little something you learned from the Tritter fiasco, to always have someone else ready to take your caseload at a moment's notice. You would be impressed at how well your backup plans are going. Of course, it's not like you planned for _this_ \- well, who could? - but it's working nonetheless, and there should be a certain sense of pride in a well made backup plan.

It's ironic, in the Alanis Morisette sense of the word, that although you are one of the most beloved doctors at Princeton Plainsboro, you don't have even one friend who cares enough about you to visit. It's really a testament to how _unimportant_ you are, how small in the grand workings of life, that no one checks on you until someone needs a new credit card to put against a file.

You'd probably laugh about it if you could.

But you can't.

It's the ninth day when the hotel clerk opens the door and sees you on the floor, your head bashed in for a lousy two hundred dollars and a few slips of plastic.


End file.
